Dianne's Deep Dives

Hey Snapple. That's not disconcerting or anything. Not like I gotta spend the rest of the night looking up these fckin jellyfish that don't die.

I have my converter now so we can get this party started! Anyone have any cool stories they want me to deep dive?

PEOPLE WHO DEDICATED THEIR LIVES TO WORKS OF ART

While I wait for my cord for my mic to come in let's still discuss the deep dive I've been on today. Today I was watching Atrocity Guide (a YouTube channel I found because I've been deep diving for weeks of quarantine) and I found the story of James Hampton and his work "Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly" and how he dedicated 21 years of his life to working on this project and making it perfect. It took up his whole storage unit where he'd often sleep on a couch in the corner. He only told a few people about it so he didn't do it for any acclaim. He just got a message and acted as a conduit for it. The amount of details he used and how he was able to craft his pieces from found objects from his time in the military and as a janitor. It's truly masterful. He also had time to write a book called "St. James: The Book of the 7 Dispensation" in his own special spiritual language that has yet to be deciphered.

AG mentioned other people toward the end of the video so I HAD to know what they did and the extent of their dedication so this is where we dive deeper.

The first tale of a person like James Hampton was Herman the Recluse. He is known for being the legendary writer of the largest illuminated text, the Codex Gigas. Legend says that Herman was going to be walled up and starved to death, he begged for his life bartering that he'd write all the secrets and earthly knowledge in one night. Once midnight took he realized that he wouldn't be able to complete the task and allegedly he sold his sold to the Devil to be able to finish the book. The Codex Gigas took 30 years to write, weighs 65 lbs, and is 3 ft long.

Ed Leedskalnin was a Latvian immigrant who built his creation in honor of the love he'd lost. He was engaged to a 16 year old girl in his country when and she broke of the engagement he heartbrokenly moved to the US. He worked for some time around the US but he ultimately settled in Florida in 1923 after getting tuberculosis. He almost immediately started building the Coral Castle and spent the next 28 years working on it in secret. He only reluctantly allowed people in to see his place (at the time called "Ed's Place" for 10 cents) in 1951.

Henry Joseph Darger Jr. He is known for creating 3 completely epic novels of over 20,000+ pages. His works took over 60 years and two works are based around kids from an orphanage called The Vivian Sisters and Penrod. Those two works grapple with his own trauma with his treatment at the Illinois Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children and how it manifested as an adult to where he wanted to create a Children's Protective Society with a "friend" named William from a similar background in a different home. His first epic ("In the Realms of the Unreal") was 15145 pages and his second epic was 10,000+ pages called "Crazy House: Further Adventures in Chicago" grapple with the themes of abandonment, forced child labor, sexuality and sexual identity, spirituality, freedom, and independence. These novels contain HUNDREDS of pages of artwork including some artworks that were 3 ft across. His last novel ("The History of My Life") was unrelated. Honestly his story about all of his un-treated mental illnesses related to childhood trauma and mental disabilities and the tragic deaths of his parents early in life make this story very sad.

Ferdinand Cheval was a French postman who spent "1879-1912 10,000 days, 93,000 hours, 33 years of struggle," building The Ideal Palace. He wasn't well to-do and it seems that after he married and started having kids tragedy after tragedy befell his life. Over 56 years of his life, his entire family (two different wives and all his kids) had died. During this time he walked as a postman and found beautiful rocks. He had by then married his second wife and would take the rocks home and would begin building a “Palace of the Imagination," and the "dream of a peasant." It's marvelously constructed especially considering Cheval had never left his area and would've never seen what would be considered his influences.

My last honorable mention who wasn't in the AG video is Sabato "Simon" Rodia who built the Watts Towers. He started building them in 1921 and finished them in 1954. Here's a quote explaining why he started building the Towers: "You have to be either good good or bad bad to be remembered ... You gotta do somethin' they never got 'em in the world." It can be deducted from this quote that he merely wanted to leave his mark on the world and he has. Some way or another he's built towers that regardless of his lack of formal training can withstand TONS of weight without toppling over. They're amazing.

So the big question is how did all of this happen? How did all of these seemingly every day people with no training suddenly get struck with a message for the people or a goal? What channeled their energy and motivation to day in and day out, painstakingly craft these wonders?

The world may never know, but we should be on the lookout for when it strikes someone else. And also if maybe 1/8th of their focus could rub off on me, maybe I wouldn't have to spend hours writing these posts LOL 💖